I had some early morning excitement today when I opened this week’s Dana Point Times and saw my letter to the editor in print. You can also view it online. No surprise it is about swimming in the ocean. It was a response to an article from the previous week with cross-training tips for surfers during flat surfing conditions. The author suggested yoga and swimming in a pool. Great suggestions! Except a pool?? I had to provide my two cents there.

Even though the surf is expected to pick up today. The surf report says it won’t peak until this afternoon. Based on the hourly forecasted sizes, it’s currently pushing the outer limits of my comfort zone (4-6+). Of course I know that these numbers are always “ballpark” estimates, but yesterday was so good (also 4-6+ according to Surfline) and when I walked by Dana Cove last night it looked so very calm. Certainly, it will be fine.

I leave at about 8:15 and on the entire drive I am thinking about how I hope I am right about the surf. As I approach the parking lot I am pretty sure I see another swimmer drying off at his car which I take as a good sign.

It’s a beautiful clear morning and there is a pretty good offshore breeze going. As I walk down the stairs, I can see the lines of waves coming in and I am trying to shrink them with my mind. A technique that I am far from mastering.

When I get to the beach, the surf seems tame. The tide is in the upper 2 foot range - so relatively low. However with the lack of sand, the water is still coming up to the end of the beach. So I have to stow my backpack high on the rocks again like I did yesterday.

I put on my goggles and head out into the water and a set starts to roll in. It’s pretty big. What is so different compared to other times of the year is that the waves are breaking so far outside. I have already begun swimming and I am well at the point that would normally be the surf line and I feel like I am not even close to the waves. They are looking bigger and bigger. The water temperature actually feels pretty good and I’m not freaked out at all by the cold. It’s hard to get a good read on the wave size. I don’t see any surfers out and it just looks so big and so far from the safety of shore. I can’t believe I am doing this but I turn around and begin to head back and plan to skip the swim. This will be a first. Then I see this surfer begin to head out. Well! If he can do it, I can do it. I realize how stupid that sounds because it is.

So I just swim and swim and swim. I notice how much farther out the surfer is than I am. How did he get out so fast? Well it is true that you can go much faster paddling on a surfboard. Eventually I am confident that I have breached the impact zone of these waves. Now I have this sinking feeling and feel like an idiot. I am going to have to come back through this. What have I done?

Welp. I’m here now. Let’s swim. I’m swimming far from shore. I am teetering on the thought of the swim back in and then tottering on the need to remain calm. I’m starting to get somewhat close to the southern end of the swim but not super close. I see a set of waves breaking against the cliffs. They seem big and look close. I decide now is a good time to turn around.

It’s hard to get the wave crashing images from last Friday’s giant swell out of my head. It was an interesting sight to behold and definitely gave me a picture of where waves could possibly break out here. Now today’s swell is not forecasted to be nearly as big, but last week definitely made an impression. I skipped Saturday and Sunday’s tamer, but still relatively large, surf because I just didn’t want to chance it. Then of course I go out today when it is already larger than both of those days.

Not soon after turning around I see a large set breaking outside north of me near Salt Creek. This swell will be inching up all day so this surf is not going to be getting smaller. I decide today to head straight back to my starting point and skip the swim to the lifeguard tower.

I get to the spot where I need to start swimming in. Right now things seem relatively calm. I am swimming fast trying to gain as much ground as possible before the next set and also trying not to exhaust myself and relax in case I do get caught. I seem to avoid the larger outside sets. A wave eventually sweeps past me and then breaks just in shore of my location. I don’t see any giant behind me so I keep swimming fast. When I enter the previous waves whitewater, the surface is all swirly and difficult to make headway at first. Eventually I can see that the houses are definitely closer. A wave breaks behind me and it’s not terrible. It seems like the initial break is strong but this deep water softens it up more quickly than usual.

As I am going through all of this I catch myself praying to God for protection. I find it interesting that when push comes to shove and I find myself in danger (or perceived danger), how traditional my theology suddenly becomes. The thought that I am here and god is “out there” and that it somehow helps that I ask for help. As if he would say, “well it sure is good Matt called up and let me know what was going on there. Otherwise he could have been in a really tough spot!” I’m thinking more about this now. In fact recently I have been thinking a lot about prayer in general. I often find prayer kind of awkward. Over the last few decades, I have gotten a lot of value from meditation and just sitting in stillness and silence. But prayer? Sometimes the idea of engaging in dialog (or what often feels more like a monologue) with this idea of God that I am sure deviates greatly from what God actually is just feels as artificial as that idea itself.

I don’t at all mean to be disrespectful of prayer. Prayer runs through countless cultures over the millennia. I absolutely think there is something there that I just don’t understand. The more I think of this the more I think this is not about “understanding.” If anything it is about surrendering understanding. In prayer we seek to come to a place that lies outside of the realm of rational understanding and coherent thought. I recently read Sanctuary of the Soul by Richard Foster which talked about meditative prayer. I felt drawn to that book because I was beginning to sense there was this difference between meditation and prayer and yet both sit on a foundation of communion with the eternal. I find that in my meditation times lately, I am compelled to contemplate the nature of prayer as a sort of awareness of the presence of God. Of course all of these concepts are just wrangling about words that point to different things for different people and even different things depending on my mood and recent experiences. All I can say is when I think of prayer in this sense - of abiding in the presence of God - I find myself in a place where I want to stay and experience more deeply.

So what about “non-meditative” prayer? I don’t think it is completely empty effort. I guess the way I look at this is that we are what we believe. The means by which we frame our experiences also influences the experiences themselves. I see some types of prayer as a way of applying attention to certain desired outcomes and as we place our attention on those outcomes, we find ourselves more likely drawn to paths that lead to those outcomes. As I write this, all of these words seem ridiculous and just a mere attempt to articulate ideas that I know I can never fully comprehend and that utterly escape nice and neat formulas and theories. These words are the best I can do.

If it was all so clear as focusing on desired outcomes then why don’t we just concentrate all of our effort on exactly that. If our life is the manifestations of our beliefs, then why don’t we just change our beliefs to match up with what we want to manifest? The interesting thing is that there are tons of “spiritual” people out there that make good money on these exact theories. They tell people to change their beliefs and visualize what they want in life. Sure, I do think there is something to that but at some point we believe things that are reinforced by our past experiences and we can’t just flip the switch and change our beliefs on a dime.

So this all started with anxiety about making my way to the shore through heavy surf and gets me to thinking about prayer and beliefs and stuff that happens in our lives and how all of these things influence the other. Trying to capture some grand unifying theory quickly becomes exhausting and feels impossible. Not only impossible but like it may just be distracting from something else more vital. We chase our tail to solve a puzzle with no solution. So I imagine myself running in circle after circle after circle chasing my tail as if there is something to be found and maybe I need to just stop and sit in the middle of the circle.

I don’t know but I am thrilled when I start to see the rocks and houses begin to look like they are nearly within reach! I am going to live today!

Later I wonder, were the waves really that big? To what degree do I let my imagination (or my beliefs?) shape what I see right in front of me. I tend to think I am in less danger than I actually am. I don’t know but what I do know is that I plan to avoid this larger surf for the time being.